Riptide Wins In Wild Conditions

What a weekend that was! As usual the Halloween Regatta delivered on the weather side of things. Saturday was a beautiful sunny southerly breeze that was a lot stronger than expected. We got in a full round robin with some fantastic race all and saw us sitting in 1st Place overall.

Sunday was an interesting day with a pretty wild forecast predicted to come in around noon which made the OA change the format from a knockout semis to a top 4 round robin. Luckily for us the weather goods gave us time and a weather window to go back to semi-finals first to 2 points. We won ours semi-final 2-0 to advance to our 4th finals in five appearances at this event. And low and behold we ended up facing good friend Lance Fraser from the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club who is the same person we have faced in the three previous finals. We would take race 1 of the first to 2 point finals but Lance came back swinging in race two to level the score 1-1.

The forecast stronger breeze came roaring in just after the second race and it quickly picked up to 25-30kts with gust approaching 40kts. The RC did a great job to fire a race off in less than ideal conditions after finally getting the anchor set and holding. We managed to nail our layline to the pin with lance not making it and putting us in the drivers seat off the line in what you would call survival conditions. Lance attempted to attack but we held our ground and lead at the top mark, with no kites it meant less of a chance for the trailing boat to attack. We rounded the bottom gate and continued our loose cover strategy upwind. We would go on to win the race by about 6-8 boat lengths in yet another wild finals at the Halloween Invitational.

Next Up

Riptide will be working on the game plan for the 2018 season and continuing the search for a sponsor.

THANK YOU to all of our supporters who have believed in Riptide Racing and stood behind us 100%. We still have a long way to go, but we couldn’t have gotten this far without your support, for which we’re forever grateful.  What we have showed is just part of Riptide Racing’s potential –with the necessary tools, we have the capacity to go all the way.

Thank you, Chris Poole

Riptide Racing